Nouhoum Traoré, PhD is the 2021 recipient of the Carl K. Eicher Award from the International Association of Agricultural Economists for best doctoral dissertation on a topic related to African development.
Traoré’s work takes a novel approach to observing the effects of climate change and trade disruptions in Côte d’Ivoire using Melitz-type trade models to examine how firms and economies perform under warmer climates.
Traoré came to the United States from Mali as a teenager, knowing no English, with a plan to study economics. Traoré graduated from Hunter College with a B.A./M.A. in Economics in 2008. His graduate thesis, which looked at whether better nutritional status leads to higher farm productivity, won the 2009 Horniker Prize in Economics, which is awarded annually for best economics thesis.
Traoré went on to get a master’s degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He worked as a project coordinator for Innovations for Poverty Action and went on to become a program manager at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Traoré pursued his PhD at UW-Madison, where he won a prestigious PODER (Policy Design and Evaluation Research in Developing Countries) fellowship in his third year and spent the year at the Paris School of Economics. He also received a departmental award for outstanding dissertation at UW-Madison. Following his graduation, Traoré joined the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
